February 8, 2017

Miniature in the Mail #58: "Leave a Mark"

"Leave a Mark," 5x5in., oil on masonite

The best places for street art—and for pure artistic expression and the wild life generally, if you're anthropologically disposed, as I am—are not in the sight lines of major thoroughfares where the authorities can see easily what's going on, but just out of the way.

I love underpasses where the action happens on two levels, the transparent and submerged. When I saw Pompeii a year ago, I was struck by how much data on Roman society archeologists extracted not from the street level but from below it, especially from the sewers and crawlspaces under homes. It was there that garbage was preserved, seeds and other foodstuff were preserved, and where Pompeians had squirreled away secret objects.